Saturday, February 23, 2008

Jeromy and I went out on a real date last night with no children, not even the baby (thanks mom!), and had a wonderful dinner and some adult conversation. PF Changs just opened a couple of weeks ago in Kennewick, and although we heard it was really hard to get in, we decided to go for it. We dropped the kids off to my mom at her work. She works for an accounting firm, and they have a "social" for their employees on Friday evenings during tax season. We enjoyed a glass of wine and headed over to the restaurant. It was only 5:30, so we thought we would be ahead of the full dinner rush, and we were. We only had to wait 15-20 minutes, and they gave us a really huge booth that sits up higher than the dining tables which gave us a nice vantage of the restaurant. We decided to go crazy with our ordering, everything looked so good, and we were technically celebrating Valentine's Day as well. PF Changs also offers a gluten-free menu that I really appreciated. Alot of their items are gluten-free anyway, but they use wheat-free soy sauce in the GF entrees which allowed me a nice selection of food to choose from. We had Chang's Chicken Lettuce Wraps for our appetizer, and we both really liked them, messy, but really tasty! The waiters mix you up a little sauce table-side that was really good in the wraps. We had Dali Chicken, Chang's Spicy Chicken, and Philip's Lemon Chicken for our entree(s). The Dali Chicken was super spicy chicken and potatoes with a ton of red chili peppers that you had to make sure not to bite into. The Chang's Spicy Chicken was their version of General Tsao's Chicken, sweet, a little spicy, a good combination. The Lemon Chicken was chicken, broccoli and lemon slices in the yummy lemon sauce. It was our favorite. It wasn't that fake, candy tasting lemon sauce that you sometimes get. It tasted like real lemon, fresh with just enough sweetness. We only ate about half of each entree (I just had some leftovers for lunch- yum!) so that we would have room for dessert. They had a flourless chocolate cake with raspberry sauce that was calling my name the moment I arrived. It was almost like really thick pudding or maybe soft fudge, with the raspberry sauce and fresh berries. I am still thinking about it. Jeromy had the banana spring rolls which were served with pineapple coconut ice cream drizzled with caramel sauce. He said they were wonderful! The service was excellent. The waiters stand around and talk to you, if you want, and are very helpful and friendly. It was a great meal, and by the time we left, there were people waiting inside and out for a table. We were happy we got there early! We were pleasantly surprised that it wasn't all that expensive either, at least no more than the other chains, Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Outback. It was around $10-$15 for an entree, most were around $12, just a little more than a small little chinese restaurant. The atmosphere was worth the extra money. Go try it, you'll like it!